Curfews don't keep kids out of trouble
ARTICLE ONE -- CON
October 25, 2011
By Jonathan Zimmerman for NewsWork
..
There's only one problem with youth curfews: They don't work. And we shouldn't kid ourselves that they do.
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Youth curfews are popular. In poll after poll, Americans support laws that restrict teenagers' activities during certain hours of the day and night.
Youth curfews are also logical. If youngsters are getting into trouble, it makes sense to get them off the streets.
There's only one problem with youth curfews: They don't work. And we shouldn't kid ourselves that they do.
Yet that's what we're doing in Philadelphia, where Mayor Nutter recently extended a 9 p.m. curfew on Friday and Saturday nights for all unaccompanied minors in Center City and University City. The measure came on the heels of this summer's violent flash-mob episodes, which seem to have quieted down since then.
But the city already had a youth curfew in place, long before the flash-mob mayhem began. On weekdays, it's 9 p.m. for children under 13 and 10:30 p.m. for children 13 to 17; on the weekends, everyone has to be home by midnight.
And that hasn't done anything to stem the tide of youth violence in Philadelphia. Insofar as the downtown curfew has "worked," it probably just displaced crime from one part of the city - and one time of the day - to another.
That's what happened in Detroit, after it adopted a youth curfew in 1976. Juvenile crime dropped 6 percent during the curfew hours, but it increased 13 percent in the midafternoon. Nationwide, more than 80 percent of juvenile offenses take place between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. - outside most curfews.
Nor do we have any solid evidence that youth curfews lower the overall rate of juvenile crime. In a close study of Monrovia, Calif., in the 1990s, for example, sociologist Michael Males found that juvenile arrests for non-curfew crimes increased 53 percent during the school months when the town's curfew was enforced. In July and August, when the curfew was not enforced, non-curfew youth crime went down 12 percent.
So why are we so wedded to youth curfews? The answer has less to with youth than with adults. Whenever we get worried that the youth are out of control, we enact a curfew. And that makes us feel better, even if it doesn't make crime go down.
Youth curfews date to late 19th century, when America's cities swelled with millions of unsupervised teens. Like laws mandating school attendance and banning child labor, the argument went, curfews would improve individual lives even as they protected the social order.
President Benjamin Harrison called curfews "the most important municipal regulation for the protection of children in American homes from the vices of the street." By 1900, 3,000 municipalities had curfews in place.
The next set of curfews came during Prohibition in the 1920s, when speakeasies and gang violence sparked new anxieties about American youth. Although juvenile crime dropped during the decade, it made for good press - and, in several cities, for new curfews.
"The street corners and vacant lots of the city are the kindergartens of a school of crime," opined an editorial writer in Chicago, endorsing the city's 1921 curfew. "The primary and intermediate classes meet in vicious poolrooms. Cabarets and tough saloons are offering advanced lessons, and post-graduate instruction is available in the jails and penitentiaries."
Then came the juvenile-delinquency scare of the 1950s, which sparked - surprise! - another wave of youth curfews. By 1957, half of American cities with populations of more than 100,000 had juvenile-curfew laws.
But the greatest spike in curfews came in the early 1990s, amid a sharp rise in youth crime. Between 1988 and 1992, criminal offenses by juveniles rose 26 percent; even worse, youth crimes against persons - murder, rape, and assault - skyrocketed 56 percent.
So curfews boomed, too. From 1990 to 1995, 53 of America's 200 largest cities enacted new curfew ordinances. The effort got a boost from President Bill Clinton, who signed a 1996 measure allotting $75 million to help local governments enact curfews and other anti-crime ordinances. "They help keep our children out of harm's way," Clinton declared.
In fact, they don't. To his credit, Mayor Nutter has instituted other measures to fight juvenile crime, including expanding the hours that recreation centers stay open. And he has skillfully used his bully pulpit, taking to the streets and airwaves to encourage parents to keep a closer watch on their children.
More power to him, but not to the curfews. They might be good politics, but they're bad policy. Let's hope the mayor can tell the difference.
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ARTICLE TWO
CON
Citation: Males, Mike and Dan Macallair. 1999. "An Analysis of Curfew Enforcement and Juvenile Crime in California." Western Criminology Review 1 (2). [Online]. Available: http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v1n2/males.html.
In recent years cities and localities across the country have expanded the use of youth curfews to address growing public concern about juvenile crime and violence. By reducing the number of youth on the street during certain hours, curfews are assumed to lower the risk factors associated with youth crime. Curfews have been widely cited by policy makers as an effective tool for reducing youth crime. However, no comprehensive analysis of the effects of these laws has been completed. This study analyzes arrest, reported crime, and mortality data from jurisdictions throughout California for the 1980-97 period. There is no support for the hypothesis that jurisdictions with curfews experience lower crime levels, accelerated youth crime reduction, or lower rates of juvenile violent death than jurisdictions without curfews.
Keywords: crime policy, curfew, youth crime, incapacitation, youth violence, violent death
An Analysis of Curfew Enforcement and
Juvenile Crime in California1
National and state leaders have endorsed the implementation and enforcement of stronger "status offense" laws to control youth crime. So-called status offenses apply to youth but not adults, such as running away from home, truancy, underage drinking, incorrigibility, and presence in public during certain hours. The last of these, night time and schoolday curfews, have won the most attention and have been cited for their potential to reduce juvenile crime (Krikorian 1996; Ricardi 1997). Proponents argue that they protect youth and the public from violence and criminality and prevent violators from more serious offenses (Ruefle, Reynolds, and Brantley 1997). Detractors warn that the arrest of youth for acts that would not be crimes if committed by adults violates basic constitutional guarantees, leads to antagonism between non-criminal youth and law enforcement, and is an inefficient way to control crime (Harvard Law Review Association 1997).
A major underlying assumption of curfews is that they reduce risk by removing juveniles from public space. However, there is no systematic study of the effects of curfew. Instead of presenting controlled data, proponents and opponents of curfews have made anecdotal statements to the media such as, "Monrovia, California's curfew adoption was followed by a 32 percent decline in residential burglaries" (Ricardi 1997). However, this assertion and others like it require scrutiny. For example, Monrovia had already experienced a forty percent decline in juvenile burglaries, and only had about a dozen juveniles arrested for burglary for each of several years prior to adopting curfew (Criminal Justice Statistics Center 1978-97). Their decline is also not compared to cities that did not enforce curfews. Thus, it is interesting to note that the following hypothetical but factual statement could be made with equal justification: "In 1992, San Francisco authorities dismantled their previously vigorous curfew enforcement, which had resulted in 1,400 arrests during the previous five years. Only three curfew arrests were made during 1993-97. Crime plummeted. From 1992 to 1997, juvenile murders declined fifty percent, property crimes reported to police declined thirty-six percent, and violent crimes reported to police declined by forty-one percent, the latter of which was the largest crime decrease of any large California city. Therefore, abolishing curfews is a crucial step to reduce youth crime and victimization."
Surprisingly, given that curfew arrests of California youth rose fourfold between 1989 and 1997 (from 5,400 to 22,400, respectively; see Figure 1), we are not aware of any systematic study of whether California's curfew laws control crime. A search turned up only twenty-five studies of curfews nationwide (three in California) since 1990. These reach mixed, often opposite, conclusions, more often philosophical rather than analytical in nature. Even those that provide statistical analysis are limited to selected time periods, specific types of crimes and areas, and do not compare jurisdictions that enforce curfews to those that do not (Ruefle et al. 1997; Harvard Law Review Association 1997). Several representative research studies follow.
For example, the U.S. Conference of Mayors recently surveyed the nation's 1,010 cities with populations of more than 30,000. The survey asked law enforcement authorities if they could credit curfews for any recent improvements in juvenile crime. Only one-third, or 347, of the cities responded to the survey. Of those, eighty-eight per cent claimed that their curfews reduced youth crime, even though the survey "did not include a statistical analysis of the effect curfews have had on crime" (Wilgoren and Fiore 1997).
A potentially interesting report on "comprehensive, community-based curfew programs" in seven cities was done by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP 1996: 1). The report concludes that "information by communities where curfews have been implemented indicates that comprehensive, community-based curfew programs are helping to reduce juvenile delinquency and victimization." However, this study does not present consistent or controlled information necessary to support the conclusion. For some cities, selected juvenile victimizations are cited; for still others, selected juvenile arrests; for others, selected crimes (such as burglaries or vehicle theft) reported to police. No controlled comparisons are made between cities that did and did not enforce curfews. Clearly, for any jurisdiction and year, some crimes and victimizations will increase and others will decrease due to natural fluctuations that are not controlled for. Selective citation of these findings are practically useless for evaluation purposes.
Individual cities, including those cited in the OJJDP study, have provided anecdotal and numerical claims regarding the effects of curfew. The city of Los Angeles analysis appears to be the most complete (LAPD 1998). From July 1997 through July 1998, the city issued three semiannual reports on its Enhanced Curfew Enforcement Effort for selected nights and areas. The reports reached contradictory conclusions. One report finds that stronger curfew enforcement "has impacted" and another that curfew enforcement "has not greatly impacted" violent crime, youth arrests, and youth victimization. Interestingly, the six-month period of the most intensive and stepped-up curfew enforcement (4,810 arrests from May to October 1997) produced no effect on crime or victimization. When curfew arrests and enforcement were cut back sharply in the following period, youth crime and victimization declined in the enforcement areas.
Finally, an analysis of Monrovia's daytime curfew by Klein (1998), submitted as a declaration in a lawsuit and cited by Monrovia in the press (Harrahill v. Santoro 1998), concludes that the curfew reduced Part I (FBI felony violent and property) crime in the city by at least seven percent from 1993 to 1996. Klein's conclusion is based on the number of Part I crimes reported to police in 1996 (the most recent year for which statistics are available) compared to 1993 (the last full year before the adoption of curfew in October 1994) for school hours and nonschool hours. In effect, Klein assumes all Part I crimes in Monrovia are committed by juveniles and that the entire reduction evident in 1996 can be explained by the curfew ordinance. However, crime clearance reports by the FBI (1997) show that only one in five reported Part I crimes are committed by (that is, cleared by the arrest of) juveniles, making this measure too imbued with adult "noise" to serve as a reliable indicator of youth crime. As will be shown in the case study of Monrovia (below), Klein's figures appear to be in error, and, when corrected, show a larger decrease in reported crime during non-curfew than during curfew enforcement hours. Overall, Klein's method fails to utilize the data available to reach a more precise conclusion.
In short, even though data exist to make more than guesses about the effects of curfews, there is insufficient research to reach a conclusion about the effects of curfew on crime or youth safety. Claims to date that curfews affect crime and youth behavior represent little more than unsupported assertions. Without long term, large scale, and controlled statistical analyses, it is not possible to reach preliminary conclusions as to whether curfew enforcement reduces, increases, or has no effect on crime.
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PRO
Successes Reported for Curfews, but Doubts Persist
Nightly curfews for teen-agers, like those recommended last week by President Clinton and Senator Bob Dole, have shown encouraging signs of reducing juvenile crime in several cities across the nation.
Yet a number of experts and law-enforcement officials say that while the curfews are overwhelmingly popular with politicians and the public, they may produce only temporary benefits and do not resolve the fundamental problems of restoring family discipline or providing young people with better schools or job opportunities. The critics also point out that most juvenile crime occurs after school, from 3 to 6 P.M., not late at night when most of the curfews are in force.
Curfews are a quick and easy fix, but not necessarily effective," said James Alan Fox, the dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. "The problem with curfew laws is that most kids, the good, the bad and the tired, are asleep at midnight," the hour at which many cities' curfews begin.
There is no accurate nationwide data on the effectiveness of curfews, which vary from city to city in hours and ages covered, or on the level of enforcement. But the police in some large cities where curfews have been instituted in the last several years have reported significant declines in violent crime by young people.
In Dallas, where a curfew took effect in May 1994 for all youths under the age of 17, violent crimes by juveniles have decreased by 30.3 percent and overall juvenile crime is down by 20.7 percent, compared with the two years before the ordinance began, said Sgt. Jim Chandler, a police spokesman.
"These figures tell us that the curfew works," Sergeant Chandler said. "Fewer kids on the streets mean fewer crimes and fewer victims."
Some experts say the issue is not whether curfews are useful but whether the right people are instituting them. One expert is Geoffrey Canada, who grew up in the South Bronx in the late 50's and 60's and who is the president of the Rheedlin Centers, an organization in Harlem that provides after-school programs for poor children and their parents.
"There's nothing wrong with saying kids should be home at night -- my mother had a curfew that I hated," Mr. Canada said. "But I'm concerned that having the police detain children after curfew is only a short-term solution that does not answer the question of teaching parents to raise their kids better and prepare them for the workplace."
He said he was also troubled "that the very people who say they want less government, to end welfare and Medicaid, are cheering for police to come into your living room and tell you how to raise your kids."
In a speech on Thursday in New Orleans, President Clinton urged more cities and towns to consider imposing curfews to deter juvenile violence. Mr. Clinton cited a new Justice Department report that found that curfews were in effect in 146 of the nation's 200 largest cities, with generally good results. He also pointed to reports of success in Dallas, Phoenix and New Orleans. On Wednesday, in Redondo Beach, Calif., Mr. Dole spoke favorably about a curfew there.
In fact, faced with a tripling in the number of homicides by teen-agers in the last decade, 90 of the 200 largest cities have introduced curfew ordinances or toughened existing laws since 1990, according to the Justice Department report. Altogether, more than 1,000 communities have imposed juvenile curfews. New York City, though, does not have one.
In Dallas in 1995, the first full year of the curfew, the police picked up about 4,000 young people, of whom 2,500 were repeat offenders who were given citations ordering them to court. The police issued citations to 65 parents who were judged to have known that their children violated the curfew. Youths and their parents, at the court's discretion, can be fined as much as $500 or ordered to perform community service, like cleaning up graffiti.
In Phoenix, juvenile arrests for violent crimes, including homicide, rape, robbery and assault, decreased 10 percent in the first year after the city began a curfew in May 1993, said the Police Chief, Dennis Garrett. In New Orleans, there was a 27 percent drop in juvenile crime during curfew hours in 1994 compared with 1993, before the curfew began, the Justice Department report said.
New Orleans has the most stringent curfew of any other major city, a "dusk-to-dawn" ordinance, which begins at 8 P.M. in the winter and 9 P.M. in the summer. In most other cities, curfews generally begin at 11 P.M. on school nights and at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Before introducing the plan, Mayor Marc Morial commissioned an opinion poll in which 89 percent of voters in New Orleans backed the curfew.
There, the police department and the sheriff's department assign special officers to patrol the streets and bring violators to the Central Curfew Center. Parents are required to pick up their children there and take part in counseling with a trained staff of religious and psychiatric volunteers. Parents of repeat offenders are issued a court summons and may be fined as much as $500.
In Phoenix, officers take curfew violators to one of four recreation centers run by the Parks and Recreation Department. There, teen-agers can play basketball or video games or sleep until their parents pick them up, Chief Garrett said. This arrangement also benefits the police, he said, because officers avoid spending time filling out paperwork or waiting for parents to arrive.
Some cities are more skeptical about the value of curfews. Harry L. Shorstein, the State Attorney for Jacksonville, Fla., which has a new curfew, said he had seen only "a minimal impact" from the law because "we know that most crimes occur during school hours as a result of truancy or after school gets out and before dinner time."
"I'm not totally anti-curfew, but I'm afraid it's simplistic," he said.
Instead, Mr. Shorstein has found that truancy prevention is much more effective in reducing juvenile crime. Of the first 100 serious habitual juvenile delinquents he incarcerated under a major new program in 1992, 93 were habitual truants.
President Clinton is aware of the value of truancy laws and may soon be making a recommendation about them as well, said Rahm Emanuel, a special assistant to the President.
In New York City, which has had a 30 percent drop in juvenile crime in the last three years, the decision against a curfew was deliberate, said William J. Bratton, the former Police Commissioner and now vice chairman of a private security company.
"It was felt we could get a bigger bang for the buck with a truancy program," Mr. Bratton said.
The schools were already open to take in the offending teen-agers, he added, so the costs were minimal.
Mr. Bratton said he personally supported curfews because "they are another way of giving police an ability to change behavior." But New York is simply too large to afford enforcing a curfew, he said. Moreover, Mr. Bratton said he believed that the City Council was too liberal to pass a curfew law.
In response to the rash of curfew laws in the 1990's, the American Civil Liberties Union has attacked them by as a violation of teen-agers' rights to freedom of speech and assembly and their guarantee against unreasonable searches. But state and Federal courts have generally upheld the laws because they have been written to avoid constitutional challenges by exempting juveniles who are accompanied by an adult or who are traveling to and from work.
The Dallas curfew was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal on it.
Chris Hansen, a senior staff counsel at the A.C.L.U., said one encouraging factor was that most cities gradually lose interest in enforcing curfews because "they take a massive amount of police time and effort for very little payoff."
But Representative Bill McCollum, Republican of Florida and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, is to introduce a bill this week that would provide $250 million a year in Federal "incentive" grants to states and cities that impose curfews, along with several other tough laws like one for the fingerprinting of juvenile offenders.
Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie-Mellon University, said he understood the public's support for curfews as a "cheap and easy" answer to juvenile crime.
It would be more beneficial, Professor Blumstein said, to take advantage of this public impulse to set up community centers where teen-agers could take part in after-school sports, education and counseling -- "the whole variety of things we used to do for kids in trouble through the extended family, the church and the Police Athletic League."
"This would be a logical extension of curfews," he said, "that makes them positive and not just another rule for kids to break."
There is no accurate nationwide data on the effectiveness of curfews, which vary from city to city in hours and ages covered, or on the level of enforcement. But the police in some large cities where curfews have been instituted in the last several years have reported significant declines in violent crime by young people.
In Dallas, where a curfew took effect in May 1994 for all youths under the age of 17, violent crimes by juveniles have decreased by 30.3 percent and overall juvenile crime is down by 20.7 percent, compared with the two years before the ordinance began, said Sgt. Jim Chandler, a police spokesman.
"These figures tell us that the curfew works," Sergeant Chandler said. "Fewer kids on the streets mean fewer crimes and fewer victims."
Some experts say the issue is not whether curfews are useful but whether the right people are instituting them. One expert is Geoffrey Canada, who grew up in the South Bronx in the late 50's and 60's and who is the president of the Rheedlin Centers, an organization in Harlem that provides after-school programs for poor children and their parents.
"There's nothing wrong with saying kids should be home at night -- my mother had a curfew that I hated," Mr. Canada said. "But I'm concerned that having the police detain children after curfew is only a short-term solution that does not answer the question of teaching parents to raise their kids better and prepare them for the workplace."
He said he was also troubled "that the very people who say they want less government, to end welfare and Medicaid, are cheering for police to come into your living room and tell you how to raise your kids."
In a speech on Thursday in New Orleans, President Clinton urged more cities and towns to consider imposing curfews to deter juvenile violence. Mr. Clinton cited a new Justice Department report that found that curfews were in effect in 146 of the nation's 200 largest cities, with generally good results. He also pointed to reports of success in Dallas, Phoenix and New Orleans. On Wednesday, in Redondo Beach, Calif., Mr. Dole spoke favorably about a curfew there.
In fact, faced with a tripling in the number of homicides by teen-agers in the last decade, 90 of the 200 largest cities have introduced curfew ordinances or toughened existing laws since 1990, according to the Justice Department report. Altogether, more than 1,000 communities have imposed juvenile curfews. New York City, though, does not have one.
In Dallas in 1995, the first full year of the curfew, the police picked up about 4,000 young people, of whom 2,500 were repeat offenders who were given citations ordering them to court. The police issued citations to 65 parents who were judged to have known that their children violated the curfew. Youths and their parents, at the court's discretion, can be fined as much as $500 or ordered to perform community service, like cleaning up graffiti.
In Phoenix, juvenile arrests for violent crimes, including homicide, rape, robbery and assault, decreased 10 percent in the first year after the city began a curfew in May 1993, said the Police Chief, Dennis Garrett. In New Orleans, there was a 27 percent drop in juvenile crime during curfew hours in 1994 compared with 1993, before the curfew began, the Justice Department report said.
New Orleans has the most stringent curfew of any other major city, a "dusk-to-dawn" ordinance, which begins at 8 P.M. in the winter and 9 P.M. in the summer. In most other cities, curfews generally begin at 11 P.M. on school nights and at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Before introducing the plan, Mayor Marc Morial commissioned an opinion poll in which 89 percent of voters in New Orleans backed the curfew.
There, the police department and the sheriff's department assign special officers to patrol the streets and bring violators to the Central Curfew Center. Parents are required to pick up their children there and take part in counseling with a trained staff of religious and psychiatric volunteers. Parents of repeat offenders are issued a court summons and may be fined as much as $500.
In Phoenix, officers take curfew violators to one of four recreation centers run by the Parks and Recreation Department. There, teen-agers can play basketball or video games or sleep until their parents pick them up, Chief Garrett said. This arrangement also benefits the police, he said, because officers avoid spending time filling out paperwork or waiting for parents to arrive.
Some cities are more skeptical about the value of curfews. Harry L. Shorstein, the State Attorney for Jacksonville, Fla., which has a new curfew, said he had seen only "a minimal impact" from the law because "we know that most crimes occur during school hours as a result of truancy or after school gets out and before dinner time."
"I'm not totally anti-curfew, but I'm afraid it's simplistic," he said.
Instead, Mr. Shorstein has found that truancy prevention is much more effective in reducing juvenile crime. Of the first 100 serious habitual juvenile delinquents he incarcerated under a major new program in 1992, 93 were habitual truants.
President Clinton is aware of the value of truancy laws and may soon be making a recommendation about them as well, said Rahm Emanuel, a special assistant to the President.
In New York City, which has had a 30 percent drop in juvenile crime in the last three years, the decision against a curfew was deliberate, said William J. Bratton, the former Police Commissioner and now vice chairman of a private security company.
"It was felt we could get a bigger bang for the buck with a truancy program," Mr. Bratton said.
The schools were already open to take in the offending teen-agers, he added, so the costs were minimal.
Mr. Bratton said he personally supported curfews because "they are another way of giving police an ability to change behavior." But New York is simply too large to afford enforcing a curfew, he said. Moreover, Mr. Bratton said he believed that the City Council was too liberal to pass a curfew law.
In response to the rash of curfew laws in the 1990's, the American Civil Liberties Union has attacked them by as a violation of teen-agers' rights to freedom of speech and assembly and their guarantee against unreasonable searches. But state and Federal courts have generally upheld the laws because they have been written to avoid constitutional challenges by exempting juveniles who are accompanied by an adult or who are traveling to and from work.
The Dallas curfew was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal on it.
Chris Hansen, a senior staff counsel at the A.C.L.U., said one encouraging factor was that most cities gradually lose interest in enforcing curfews because "they take a massive amount of police time and effort for very little payoff."
But Representative Bill McCollum, Republican of Florida and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, is to introduce a bill this week that would provide $250 million a year in Federal "incentive" grants to states and cities that impose curfews, along with several other tough laws like one for the fingerprinting of juvenile offenders.
Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie-Mellon University, said he understood the public's support for curfews as a "cheap and easy" answer to juvenile crime.
It would be more beneficial, Professor Blumstein said, to take advantage of this public impulse to set up community centers where teen-agers could take part in after-school sports, education and counseling -- "the whole variety of things we used to do for kids in trouble through the extended family, the church and the Police Athletic League."
"This would be a logical extension of curfews," he said, "that makes them positive and not just another rule for kids to break."
There is no accurate nationwide data on the effectiveness of curfews, which vary from city to city in hours and ages covered, or on the level of enforcement. But the police in some large cities where curfews have been instituted in the last several years have reported significant declines in violent crime by young people.
In Dallas, where a curfew took effect in May 1994 for all youths under the age of 17, violent crimes by juveniles have decreased by 30.3 percent and overall juvenile crime is down by 20.7 percent, compared with the two years before the ordinance began, said Sgt. Jim Chandler, a police spokesman.
"These figures tell us that the curfew works," Sergeant Chandler said. "Fewer kids on the streets mean fewer crimes and fewer victims."
Some experts say the issue is not whether curfews are useful but whether the right people are instituting them. One expert is Geoffrey Canada, who grew up in the South Bronx in the late 50's and 60's and who is the president of the Rheedlin Centers, an organization in Harlem that provides after-school programs for poor children and their parents.
"There's nothing wrong with saying kids should be home at night -- my mother had a curfew that I hated," Mr. Canada said. "But I'm concerned that having the police detain children after curfew is only a short-term solution that does not answer the question of teaching parents to raise their kids better and prepare them for the workplace."
He said he was also troubled "that the very people who say they want less government, to end welfare and Medicaid, are cheering for police to come into your living room and tell you how to raise your kids."
In a speech on Thursday in New Orleans, President Clinton urged more cities and towns to consider imposing curfews to deter juvenile violence. Mr. Clinton cited a new Justice Department report that found that curfews were in effect in 146 of the nation's 200 largest cities, with generally good results. He also pointed to reports of success in Dallas, Phoenix and New Orleans. On Wednesday, in Redondo Beach, Calif., Mr. Dole spoke favorably about a curfew there.
In fact, faced with a tripling in the number of homicides by teen-agers in the last decade, 90 of the 200 largest cities have introduced curfew ordinances or toughened existing laws since 1990, according to the Justice Department report. Altogether, more than 1,000 communities have imposed juvenile curfews. New York City, though, does not have one.
In Dallas in 1995, the first full year of the curfew, the police picked up about 4,000 young people, of whom 2,500 were repeat offenders who were given citations ordering them to court. The police issued citations to 65 parents who were judged to have known that their children violated the curfew. Youths and their parents, at the court's discretion, can be fined as much as $500 or ordered to perform community service, like cleaning up graffiti.
In Phoenix, juvenile arrests for violent crimes, including homicide, rape, robbery and assault, decreased 10 percent in the first year after the city began a curfew in May 1993, said the Police Chief, Dennis Garrett. In New Orleans, there was a 27 percent drop in juvenile crime during curfew hours in 1994 compared with 1993, before the curfew began, the Justice Department report said.
New Orleans has the most stringent curfew of any other major city, a "dusk-to-dawn" ordinance, which begins at 8 P.M. in the winter and 9 P.M. in the summer. In most other cities, curfews generally begin at 11 P.M. on school nights and at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Before introducing the plan, Mayor Marc Morial commissioned an opinion poll in which 89 percent of voters in New Orleans backed the curfew.
There, the police department and the sheriff's department assign special officers to patrol the streets and bring violators to the Central Curfew Center. Parents are required to pick up their children there and take part in counseling with a trained staff of religious and psychiatric volunteers. Parents of repeat offenders are issued a court summons and may be fined as much as $500.
In Phoenix, officers take curfew violators to one of four recreation centers run by the Parks and Recreation Department. There, teen-agers can play basketball or video games or sleep until their parents pick them up, Chief Garrett said. This arrangement also benefits the police, he said, because officers avoid spending time filling out paperwork or waiting for parents to arrive.
Some cities are more skeptical about the value of curfews. Harry L. Shorstein, the State Attorney for Jacksonville, Fla., which has a new curfew, said he had seen only "a minimal impact" from the law because "we know that most crimes occur during school hours as a result of truancy or after school gets out and before dinner time."
"I'm not totally anti-curfew, but I'm afraid it's simplistic," he said.
Instead, Mr. Shorstein has found that truancy prevention is much more effective in reducing juvenile crime. Of the first 100 serious habitual juvenile delinquents he incarcerated under a major new program in 1992, 93 were habitual truants.
President Clinton is aware of the value of truancy laws and may soon be making a recommendation about them as well, said Rahm Emanuel, a special assistant to the President.
In New York City, which has had a 30 percent drop in juvenile crime in the last three years, the decision against a curfew was deliberate, said William J. Bratton, the former Police Commissioner and now vice chairman of a private security company.
"It was felt we could get a bigger bang for the buck with a truancy program," Mr. Bratton said.
The schools were already open to take in the offending teen-agers, he added, so the costs were minimal.
Mr. Bratton said he personally supported curfews because "they are another way of giving police an ability to change behavior." But New York is simply too large to afford enforcing a curfew, he said. Moreover, Mr. Bratton said he believed that the City Council was too liberal to pass a curfew law.
In response to the rash of curfew laws in the 1990's, the American Civil Liberties Union has attacked them by as a violation of teen-agers' rights to freedom of speech and assembly and their guarantee against unreasonable searches. But state and Federal courts have generally upheld the laws because they have been written to avoid constitutional challenges by exempting juveniles who are accompanied by an adult or who are traveling to and from work.
The Dallas curfew was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal on it.
Chris Hansen, a senior staff counsel at the A.C.L.U., said one encouraging factor was that most cities gradually lose interest in enforcing curfews because "they take a massive amount of police time and effort for very little payoff."
But Representative Bill McCollum, Republican of Florida and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, is to introduce a bill this week that would provide $250 million a year in Federal "incentive" grants to states and cities that impose curfews, along with several other tough laws like one for the fingerprinting of juvenile offenders.
Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie-Mellon University, said he understood the public's support for curfews as a "cheap and easy" answer to juvenile crime.
It would be more beneficial, Professor Blumstein said, to take advantage of this public impulse to set up community centers where teen-agers could take part in after-school sports, education and counseling -- "the whole variety of things we used to do for kids in trouble through the extended family, the church and the Police Athletic League."
"This would be a logical extension of curfews," he said, "that makes them positive and not just another rule for kids to break."
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/03/us/successes-reported-for-curfews-but-doubts-persist.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
-----------------
PRO
The question is should Cook county extend their curfew for minors on weekdays and weekends? In brief the extension of curfew would only make minors happier and take away some of their juvenile disdain for law enforcement. One hour is not going to keep anyone from doing anything that they would have done with one less hour. Early curfew for minors may have a few positive effects, but in the end should curfew should be later.
The majority of students would agree with an extension of curfew which was recently changed from 12 pm to 11pm on weekends and 11pm to 10pm in Cook county. The extension would have many positive effects for minors. Students who have jobs that require them to work past the curfew on weekdays are left driving home after curfew hoping they won’t be pulled over, and if they are pulled over they are at the mercy of an officer who may or may not believe their story. The need for extended curfew extends into education as well. If a student is out past curfew working on a school project once again they are at the mercy of an officer who may or may not be forgiving. For some athletes their sports practices keep them out past curfew. The shortening of curfew has put athletes in a position were it is either not participate their sport or activity, or risk the ticket and do it anyway. There is also the less popular option of having one of your irritable parents or adult siblings picking you up late at night from your activity. Either way there is no way out of this dilemma but to extent the curfew.
In addition to the obstacles and setbacks a weekday curfew sets for minors, a shortened curfew on weekends also has it own collection of cons. The weekend holds a significant amount of the time that a minor is able to relax and spend time with friends. It is no lie that there are minors who engage in illegal acts on weekends such as drinking, smoking, and drag racing. But the truth is that one less hour of freedom is not going to stop any of these offenses. By shortening curfew it will just push all of these events to an earlier time it won’t prevent any of them. It’s as though someone is just rescheduling a meeting or sporting event. The shortening of curfew will only provoke some minors to break the law just based on the idea of teenage rebellion and “sticking it to the man.” The extension of curfew will allow parents not to worry so much about their child if they are required to be out beyond curfew for any job/activity related occasion. By extending the curfew police officers can turn their attention from catching minors trying to get home after curfew, to more serious offenses. Having fewer minors being ticketed for being out beyond curfew will in turn unclog the county court system, that has a portion of its time eaten up everyday in handing out fines to minors and pushing them out the door only to see another offender come in.
When the new curfew was set on the New Year many people didn’t even realize that it had changed. Many parents of teens have no clue that the curfew has changed for their minor. Many teens know about the curfew but neglect to tell their parents about the change. This non realization has completely negated the new curfew. Many teens have also claimed that their parents don’t even care that they stay out past the curfew. This lack of concern from some parents supports the decision to extent curfew. If a parent is not worried about their own child why should the state be? This lack of knowledge or just plain ignoring of this new law only calls for alternate solutions one being the extension of curfew for minors.
Parents and law enforce have their own opinions about the curfew laws as well. Their opinions are compelling and legitimate. For one, they believe that if a student were to stay out to late the student is more likely to engage in dangerous and illegal actions. Second, is that driving at night would be more dangerous and riskier for a less experienced driver. And lastly that minor drivers are more susceptible to being struck by a drunk driver late at night. While these arguments are reasonable and with good intentions they are based on assumption and what could happen. First, a student is no more likely to engage in an illegal act an hour later at night, it’s not as if the police station closes at midnight. Second, saying driving at night, while there is less vision, is more dangerous is false, the night at 11 pm is no lighter than the night at 12 am. If anything the road will be less crowded at night giving valuable experience to a young driver. Finally, the opposing argument that more people are struck by drunk drivers at 12 am and later is a fact and very legitimate, but it can be made less of a risk. With more officers paying more attention to drivers who are driving erratically and not looking closely at cars to see if the driver looks under the age limit. The curfew extension will decrease the number of drunk drivers who can cause harm to a minor, thus making the road safer at night.
Extending curfew may have its own considerable disagreements, but the positive value that can be had is overpowering. The extension will make driving at night safer and valuable experience for drivers. It will make parents feel better about their child driving late at night. An extension will quill the need from minors to rebel and stay out past the curfew because they will be most likely satisfied with the new curfew. The positives of an extension of curfew are overwhelming, and the curfew should be extended. This extension should be seriously considered by Cook county.
Yet a number of experts and law-enforcement officials say that while the curfews are overwhelmingly popular with politicians and the public, they may produce only temporary benefits and do not resolve the fundamental problems of restoring family discipline or providing young people with better schools or job opportunities. The critics also point out that most juvenile crime occurs after school, from 3 to 6 P.M., not late at night when most of the curfews are in force.
Curfews are a quick and easy fix, but not necessarily effective," said James Alan Fox, the dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. "The problem with curfew laws is that most kids, the good, the bad and the tired, are asleep at midnight," the hour at which many cities' curfews begin.
There is no accurate nationwide data on the effectiveness of curfews, which vary from city to city in hours and ages covered, or on the level of enforcement. But the police in some large cities where curfews have been instituted in the last several years have reported significant declines in violent crime by young people.
In Dallas, where a curfew took effect in May 1994 for all youths under the age of 17, violent crimes by juveniles have decreased by 30.3 percent and overall juvenile crime is down by 20.7 percent, compared with the two years before the ordinance began, said Sgt. Jim Chandler, a police spokesman.
"These figures tell us that the curfew works," Sergeant Chandler said. "Fewer kids on the streets mean fewer crimes and fewer victims."
Some experts say the issue is not whether curfews are useful but whether the right people are instituting them. One expert is Geoffrey Canada, who grew up in the South Bronx in the late 50's and 60's and who is the president of the Rheedlin Centers, an organization in Harlem that provides after-school programs for poor children and their parents.
"There's nothing wrong with saying kids should be home at night -- my mother had a curfew that I hated," Mr. Canada said. "But I'm concerned that having the police detain children after curfew is only a short-term solution that does not answer the question of teaching parents to raise their kids better and prepare them for the workplace."
He said he was also troubled "that the very people who say they want less government, to end welfare and Medicaid, are cheering for police to come into your living room and tell you how to raise your kids."
In a speech on Thursday in New Orleans, President Clinton urged more cities and towns to consider imposing curfews to deter juvenile violence. Mr. Clinton cited a new Justice Department report that found that curfews were in effect in 146 of the nation's 200 largest cities, with generally good results. He also pointed to reports of success in Dallas, Phoenix and New Orleans. On Wednesday, in Redondo Beach, Calif., Mr. Dole spoke favorably about a curfew there.
In fact, faced with a tripling in the number of homicides by teen-agers in the last decade, 90 of the 200 largest cities have introduced curfew ordinances or toughened existing laws since 1990, according to the Justice Department report. Altogether, more than 1,000 communities have imposed juvenile curfews. New York City, though, does not have one.
In Dallas in 1995, the first full year of the curfew, the police picked up about 4,000 young people, of whom 2,500 were repeat offenders who were given citations ordering them to court. The police issued citations to 65 parents who were judged to have known that their children violated the curfew. Youths and their parents, at the court's discretion, can be fined as much as $500 or ordered to perform community service, like cleaning up graffiti.
In Phoenix, juvenile arrests for violent crimes, including homicide, rape, robbery and assault, decreased 10 percent in the first year after the city began a curfew in May 1993, said the Police Chief, Dennis Garrett. In New Orleans, there was a 27 percent drop in juvenile crime during curfew hours in 1994 compared with 1993, before the curfew began, the Justice Department report said.
New Orleans has the most stringent curfew of any other major city, a "dusk-to-dawn" ordinance, which begins at 8 P.M. in the winter and 9 P.M. in the summer. In most other cities, curfews generally begin at 11 P.M. on school nights and at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Before introducing the plan, Mayor Marc Morial commissioned an opinion poll in which 89 percent of voters in New Orleans backed the curfew.
There, the police department and the sheriff's department assign special officers to patrol the streets and bring violators to the Central Curfew Center. Parents are required to pick up their children there and take part in counseling with a trained staff of religious and psychiatric volunteers. Parents of repeat offenders are issued a court summons and may be fined as much as $500.
In Phoenix, officers take curfew violators to one of four recreation centers run by the Parks and Recreation Department. There, teen-agers can play basketball or video games or sleep until their parents pick them up, Chief Garrett said. This arrangement also benefits the police, he said, because officers avoid spending time filling out paperwork or waiting for parents to arrive.
Some cities are more skeptical about the value of curfews. Harry L. Shorstein, the State Attorney for Jacksonville, Fla., which has a new curfew, said he had seen only "a minimal impact" from the law because "we know that most crimes occur during school hours as a result of truancy or after school gets out and before dinner time."
"I'm not totally anti-curfew, but I'm afraid it's simplistic," he said.
Instead, Mr. Shorstein has found that truancy prevention is much more effective in reducing juvenile crime. Of the first 100 serious habitual juvenile delinquents he incarcerated under a major new program in 1992, 93 were habitual truants.
President Clinton is aware of the value of truancy laws and may soon be making a recommendation about them as well, said Rahm Emanuel, a special assistant to the President.
In New York City, which has had a 30 percent drop in juvenile crime in the last three years, the decision against a curfew was deliberate, said William J. Bratton, the former Police Commissioner and now vice chairman of a private security company.
"It was felt we could get a bigger bang for the buck with a truancy program," Mr. Bratton said.
The schools were already open to take in the offending teen-agers, he added, so the costs were minimal.
Mr. Bratton said he personally supported curfews because "they are another way of giving police an ability to change behavior." But New York is simply too large to afford enforcing a curfew, he said. Moreover, Mr. Bratton said he believed that the City Council was too liberal to pass a curfew law.
In response to the rash of curfew laws in the 1990's, the American Civil Liberties Union has attacked them by as a violation of teen-agers' rights to freedom of speech and assembly and their guarantee against unreasonable searches. But state and Federal courts have generally upheld the laws because they have been written to avoid constitutional challenges by exempting juveniles who are accompanied by an adult or who are traveling to and from work.
The Dallas curfew was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal on it.
Chris Hansen, a senior staff counsel at the A.C.L.U., said one encouraging factor was that most cities gradually lose interest in enforcing curfews because "they take a massive amount of police time and effort for very little payoff."
But Representative Bill McCollum, Republican of Florida and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, is to introduce a bill this week that would provide $250 million a year in Federal "incentive" grants to states and cities that impose curfews, along with several other tough laws like one for the fingerprinting of juvenile offenders.
Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie-Mellon University, said he understood the public's support for curfews as a "cheap and easy" answer to juvenile crime.
It would be more beneficial, Professor Blumstein said, to take advantage of this public impulse to set up community centers where teen-agers could take part in after-school sports, education and counseling -- "the whole variety of things we used to do for kids in trouble through the extended family, the church and the Police Athletic League."
"This would be a logical extension of curfews," he said, "that makes them positive and not just another rule for kids to break."
There is no accurate nationwide data on the effectiveness of curfews, which vary from city to city in hours and ages covered, or on the level of enforcement. But the police in some large cities where curfews have been instituted in the last several years have reported significant declines in violent crime by young people.
In Dallas, where a curfew took effect in May 1994 for all youths under the age of 17, violent crimes by juveniles have decreased by 30.3 percent and overall juvenile crime is down by 20.7 percent, compared with the two years before the ordinance began, said Sgt. Jim Chandler, a police spokesman.
"These figures tell us that the curfew works," Sergeant Chandler said. "Fewer kids on the streets mean fewer crimes and fewer victims."
Some experts say the issue is not whether curfews are useful but whether the right people are instituting them. One expert is Geoffrey Canada, who grew up in the South Bronx in the late 50's and 60's and who is the president of the Rheedlin Centers, an organization in Harlem that provides after-school programs for poor children and their parents.
"There's nothing wrong with saying kids should be home at night -- my mother had a curfew that I hated," Mr. Canada said. "But I'm concerned that having the police detain children after curfew is only a short-term solution that does not answer the question of teaching parents to raise their kids better and prepare them for the workplace."
He said he was also troubled "that the very people who say they want less government, to end welfare and Medicaid, are cheering for police to come into your living room and tell you how to raise your kids."
In a speech on Thursday in New Orleans, President Clinton urged more cities and towns to consider imposing curfews to deter juvenile violence. Mr. Clinton cited a new Justice Department report that found that curfews were in effect in 146 of the nation's 200 largest cities, with generally good results. He also pointed to reports of success in Dallas, Phoenix and New Orleans. On Wednesday, in Redondo Beach, Calif., Mr. Dole spoke favorably about a curfew there.
In fact, faced with a tripling in the number of homicides by teen-agers in the last decade, 90 of the 200 largest cities have introduced curfew ordinances or toughened existing laws since 1990, according to the Justice Department report. Altogether, more than 1,000 communities have imposed juvenile curfews. New York City, though, does not have one.
In Dallas in 1995, the first full year of the curfew, the police picked up about 4,000 young people, of whom 2,500 were repeat offenders who were given citations ordering them to court. The police issued citations to 65 parents who were judged to have known that their children violated the curfew. Youths and their parents, at the court's discretion, can be fined as much as $500 or ordered to perform community service, like cleaning up graffiti.
In Phoenix, juvenile arrests for violent crimes, including homicide, rape, robbery and assault, decreased 10 percent in the first year after the city began a curfew in May 1993, said the Police Chief, Dennis Garrett. In New Orleans, there was a 27 percent drop in juvenile crime during curfew hours in 1994 compared with 1993, before the curfew began, the Justice Department report said.
New Orleans has the most stringent curfew of any other major city, a "dusk-to-dawn" ordinance, which begins at 8 P.M. in the winter and 9 P.M. in the summer. In most other cities, curfews generally begin at 11 P.M. on school nights and at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Before introducing the plan, Mayor Marc Morial commissioned an opinion poll in which 89 percent of voters in New Orleans backed the curfew.
There, the police department and the sheriff's department assign special officers to patrol the streets and bring violators to the Central Curfew Center. Parents are required to pick up their children there and take part in counseling with a trained staff of religious and psychiatric volunteers. Parents of repeat offenders are issued a court summons and may be fined as much as $500.
In Phoenix, officers take curfew violators to one of four recreation centers run by the Parks and Recreation Department. There, teen-agers can play basketball or video games or sleep until their parents pick them up, Chief Garrett said. This arrangement also benefits the police, he said, because officers avoid spending time filling out paperwork or waiting for parents to arrive.
Some cities are more skeptical about the value of curfews. Harry L. Shorstein, the State Attorney for Jacksonville, Fla., which has a new curfew, said he had seen only "a minimal impact" from the law because "we know that most crimes occur during school hours as a result of truancy or after school gets out and before dinner time."
"I'm not totally anti-curfew, but I'm afraid it's simplistic," he said.
Instead, Mr. Shorstein has found that truancy prevention is much more effective in reducing juvenile crime. Of the first 100 serious habitual juvenile delinquents he incarcerated under a major new program in 1992, 93 were habitual truants.
President Clinton is aware of the value of truancy laws and may soon be making a recommendation about them as well, said Rahm Emanuel, a special assistant to the President.
In New York City, which has had a 30 percent drop in juvenile crime in the last three years, the decision against a curfew was deliberate, said William J. Bratton, the former Police Commissioner and now vice chairman of a private security company.
"It was felt we could get a bigger bang for the buck with a truancy program," Mr. Bratton said.
The schools were already open to take in the offending teen-agers, he added, so the costs were minimal.
Mr. Bratton said he personally supported curfews because "they are another way of giving police an ability to change behavior." But New York is simply too large to afford enforcing a curfew, he said. Moreover, Mr. Bratton said he believed that the City Council was too liberal to pass a curfew law.
In response to the rash of curfew laws in the 1990's, the American Civil Liberties Union has attacked them by as a violation of teen-agers' rights to freedom of speech and assembly and their guarantee against unreasonable searches. But state and Federal courts have generally upheld the laws because they have been written to avoid constitutional challenges by exempting juveniles who are accompanied by an adult or who are traveling to and from work.
The Dallas curfew was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal on it.
Chris Hansen, a senior staff counsel at the A.C.L.U., said one encouraging factor was that most cities gradually lose interest in enforcing curfews because "they take a massive amount of police time and effort for very little payoff."
But Representative Bill McCollum, Republican of Florida and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, is to introduce a bill this week that would provide $250 million a year in Federal "incentive" grants to states and cities that impose curfews, along with several other tough laws like one for the fingerprinting of juvenile offenders.
Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie-Mellon University, said he understood the public's support for curfews as a "cheap and easy" answer to juvenile crime.
It would be more beneficial, Professor Blumstein said, to take advantage of this public impulse to set up community centers where teen-agers could take part in after-school sports, education and counseling -- "the whole variety of things we used to do for kids in trouble through the extended family, the church and the Police Athletic League."
"This would be a logical extension of curfews," he said, "that makes them positive and not just another rule for kids to break."
There is no accurate nationwide data on the effectiveness of curfews, which vary from city to city in hours and ages covered, or on the level of enforcement. But the police in some large cities where curfews have been instituted in the last several years have reported significant declines in violent crime by young people.
In Dallas, where a curfew took effect in May 1994 for all youths under the age of 17, violent crimes by juveniles have decreased by 30.3 percent and overall juvenile crime is down by 20.7 percent, compared with the two years before the ordinance began, said Sgt. Jim Chandler, a police spokesman.
"These figures tell us that the curfew works," Sergeant Chandler said. "Fewer kids on the streets mean fewer crimes and fewer victims."
Some experts say the issue is not whether curfews are useful but whether the right people are instituting them. One expert is Geoffrey Canada, who grew up in the South Bronx in the late 50's and 60's and who is the president of the Rheedlin Centers, an organization in Harlem that provides after-school programs for poor children and their parents.
"There's nothing wrong with saying kids should be home at night -- my mother had a curfew that I hated," Mr. Canada said. "But I'm concerned that having the police detain children after curfew is only a short-term solution that does not answer the question of teaching parents to raise their kids better and prepare them for the workplace."
He said he was also troubled "that the very people who say they want less government, to end welfare and Medicaid, are cheering for police to come into your living room and tell you how to raise your kids."
In a speech on Thursday in New Orleans, President Clinton urged more cities and towns to consider imposing curfews to deter juvenile violence. Mr. Clinton cited a new Justice Department report that found that curfews were in effect in 146 of the nation's 200 largest cities, with generally good results. He also pointed to reports of success in Dallas, Phoenix and New Orleans. On Wednesday, in Redondo Beach, Calif., Mr. Dole spoke favorably about a curfew there.
In fact, faced with a tripling in the number of homicides by teen-agers in the last decade, 90 of the 200 largest cities have introduced curfew ordinances or toughened existing laws since 1990, according to the Justice Department report. Altogether, more than 1,000 communities have imposed juvenile curfews. New York City, though, does not have one.
In Dallas in 1995, the first full year of the curfew, the police picked up about 4,000 young people, of whom 2,500 were repeat offenders who were given citations ordering them to court. The police issued citations to 65 parents who were judged to have known that their children violated the curfew. Youths and their parents, at the court's discretion, can be fined as much as $500 or ordered to perform community service, like cleaning up graffiti.
In Phoenix, juvenile arrests for violent crimes, including homicide, rape, robbery and assault, decreased 10 percent in the first year after the city began a curfew in May 1993, said the Police Chief, Dennis Garrett. In New Orleans, there was a 27 percent drop in juvenile crime during curfew hours in 1994 compared with 1993, before the curfew began, the Justice Department report said.
New Orleans has the most stringent curfew of any other major city, a "dusk-to-dawn" ordinance, which begins at 8 P.M. in the winter and 9 P.M. in the summer. In most other cities, curfews generally begin at 11 P.M. on school nights and at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Before introducing the plan, Mayor Marc Morial commissioned an opinion poll in which 89 percent of voters in New Orleans backed the curfew.
There, the police department and the sheriff's department assign special officers to patrol the streets and bring violators to the Central Curfew Center. Parents are required to pick up their children there and take part in counseling with a trained staff of religious and psychiatric volunteers. Parents of repeat offenders are issued a court summons and may be fined as much as $500.
In Phoenix, officers take curfew violators to one of four recreation centers run by the Parks and Recreation Department. There, teen-agers can play basketball or video games or sleep until their parents pick them up, Chief Garrett said. This arrangement also benefits the police, he said, because officers avoid spending time filling out paperwork or waiting for parents to arrive.
Some cities are more skeptical about the value of curfews. Harry L. Shorstein, the State Attorney for Jacksonville, Fla., which has a new curfew, said he had seen only "a minimal impact" from the law because "we know that most crimes occur during school hours as a result of truancy or after school gets out and before dinner time."
"I'm not totally anti-curfew, but I'm afraid it's simplistic," he said.
Instead, Mr. Shorstein has found that truancy prevention is much more effective in reducing juvenile crime. Of the first 100 serious habitual juvenile delinquents he incarcerated under a major new program in 1992, 93 were habitual truants.
President Clinton is aware of the value of truancy laws and may soon be making a recommendation about them as well, said Rahm Emanuel, a special assistant to the President.
In New York City, which has had a 30 percent drop in juvenile crime in the last three years, the decision against a curfew was deliberate, said William J. Bratton, the former Police Commissioner and now vice chairman of a private security company.
"It was felt we could get a bigger bang for the buck with a truancy program," Mr. Bratton said.
The schools were already open to take in the offending teen-agers, he added, so the costs were minimal.
Mr. Bratton said he personally supported curfews because "they are another way of giving police an ability to change behavior." But New York is simply too large to afford enforcing a curfew, he said. Moreover, Mr. Bratton said he believed that the City Council was too liberal to pass a curfew law.
In response to the rash of curfew laws in the 1990's, the American Civil Liberties Union has attacked them by as a violation of teen-agers' rights to freedom of speech and assembly and their guarantee against unreasonable searches. But state and Federal courts have generally upheld the laws because they have been written to avoid constitutional challenges by exempting juveniles who are accompanied by an adult or who are traveling to and from work.
The Dallas curfew was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal on it.
Chris Hansen, a senior staff counsel at the A.C.L.U., said one encouraging factor was that most cities gradually lose interest in enforcing curfews because "they take a massive amount of police time and effort for very little payoff."
But Representative Bill McCollum, Republican of Florida and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, is to introduce a bill this week that would provide $250 million a year in Federal "incentive" grants to states and cities that impose curfews, along with several other tough laws like one for the fingerprinting of juvenile offenders.
Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie-Mellon University, said he understood the public's support for curfews as a "cheap and easy" answer to juvenile crime.
It would be more beneficial, Professor Blumstein said, to take advantage of this public impulse to set up community centers where teen-agers could take part in after-school sports, education and counseling -- "the whole variety of things we used to do for kids in trouble through the extended family, the church and the Police Athletic League."
"This would be a logical extension of curfews," he said, "that makes them positive and not just another rule for kids to break."
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/03/us/successes-reported-for-curfews-but-doubts-persist.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
-----------------
PRO
The Truth about Curfew
The question is should Cook county extend their curfew for minors on weekdays and weekends? In brief the extension of curfew would only make minors happier and take away some of their juvenile disdain for law enforcement. One hour is not going to keep anyone from doing anything that they would have done with one less hour. Early curfew for minors may have a few positive effects, but in the end should curfew should be later.
The majority of students would agree with an extension of curfew which was recently changed from 12 pm to 11pm on weekends and 11pm to 10pm in Cook county. The extension would have many positive effects for minors. Students who have jobs that require them to work past the curfew on weekdays are left driving home after curfew hoping they won’t be pulled over, and if they are pulled over they are at the mercy of an officer who may or may not believe their story. The need for extended curfew extends into education as well. If a student is out past curfew working on a school project once again they are at the mercy of an officer who may or may not be forgiving. For some athletes their sports practices keep them out past curfew. The shortening of curfew has put athletes in a position were it is either not participate their sport or activity, or risk the ticket and do it anyway. There is also the less popular option of having one of your irritable parents or adult siblings picking you up late at night from your activity. Either way there is no way out of this dilemma but to extent the curfew.
In addition to the obstacles and setbacks a weekday curfew sets for minors, a shortened curfew on weekends also has it own collection of cons. The weekend holds a significant amount of the time that a minor is able to relax and spend time with friends. It is no lie that there are minors who engage in illegal acts on weekends such as drinking, smoking, and drag racing. But the truth is that one less hour of freedom is not going to stop any of these offenses. By shortening curfew it will just push all of these events to an earlier time it won’t prevent any of them. It’s as though someone is just rescheduling a meeting or sporting event. The shortening of curfew will only provoke some minors to break the law just based on the idea of teenage rebellion and “sticking it to the man.” The extension of curfew will allow parents not to worry so much about their child if they are required to be out beyond curfew for any job/activity related occasion. By extending the curfew police officers can turn their attention from catching minors trying to get home after curfew, to more serious offenses. Having fewer minors being ticketed for being out beyond curfew will in turn unclog the county court system, that has a portion of its time eaten up everyday in handing out fines to minors and pushing them out the door only to see another offender come in.
When the new curfew was set on the New Year many people didn’t even realize that it had changed. Many parents of teens have no clue that the curfew has changed for their minor. Many teens know about the curfew but neglect to tell their parents about the change. This non realization has completely negated the new curfew. Many teens have also claimed that their parents don’t even care that they stay out past the curfew. This lack of concern from some parents supports the decision to extent curfew. If a parent is not worried about their own child why should the state be? This lack of knowledge or just plain ignoring of this new law only calls for alternate solutions one being the extension of curfew for minors.
Parents and law enforce have their own opinions about the curfew laws as well. Their opinions are compelling and legitimate. For one, they believe that if a student were to stay out to late the student is more likely to engage in dangerous and illegal actions. Second, is that driving at night would be more dangerous and riskier for a less experienced driver. And lastly that minor drivers are more susceptible to being struck by a drunk driver late at night. While these arguments are reasonable and with good intentions they are based on assumption and what could happen. First, a student is no more likely to engage in an illegal act an hour later at night, it’s not as if the police station closes at midnight. Second, saying driving at night, while there is less vision, is more dangerous is false, the night at 11 pm is no lighter than the night at 12 am. If anything the road will be less crowded at night giving valuable experience to a young driver. Finally, the opposing argument that more people are struck by drunk drivers at 12 am and later is a fact and very legitimate, but it can be made less of a risk. With more officers paying more attention to drivers who are driving erratically and not looking closely at cars to see if the driver looks under the age limit. The curfew extension will decrease the number of drunk drivers who can cause harm to a minor, thus making the road safer at night.
Extending curfew may have its own considerable disagreements, but the positive value that can be had is overpowering. The extension will make driving at night safer and valuable experience for drivers. It will make parents feel better about their child driving late at night. An extension will quill the need from minors to rebel and stay out past the curfew because they will be most likely satisfied with the new curfew. The positives of an extension of curfew are overwhelming, and the curfew should be extended. This extension should be seriously considered by Cook county.
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